Jennifer Maritza McCauley Believes That Home Is a Feeling, Not a Place

In this interview, Jennifer Maritza McCauley discusses her debut story collection ‘When Trying to Return Home,’ the power of female kinship, and the allure of the short fiction format.

Books, like people, have personalities. Some tell you their most personal secrets from the first moment, while others are more reserved; you have to take some time getting to know them before they open up. Jennifer Maritza McCauley’s When Trying to Return Home is that person whose magnetism draws everyone in like moths to a flame, who, with each new encounter, becomes more layered and complex, defying your desire to know them at first glance.

Out today, on February 7, When Trying to Return Home is a dazzling debut collection spanning a century of Black American and Afro-Latino life in Puerto Rico, Pittsburgh, Louisiana, Miami, and beyond. These short stories are an evocative meditation on belonging, the meaning of home, and how we secure freedom on our own terms. In “Torsion,” a young woman is torn between overwhelming love for her mother and the need to break free from her damaging influence during a desperate and disastrous attempt to rescue her brother from foster care. In “La Espera,” a man, his wife, and his mistress each confront the borders separating love and hate, obligation and longing, on the eve of a flight to San Juan. A college student grapples with the space between chivalry and machismo in a tense encounter involving a nun in “Good Guys.” And set in 1930s Louisiana, “Last Saints” follows a woman attempting to find a place to call her own who chances upon an old friend at a bar and must reckon with her troubled past. Forming a web of desires and consequences that span generations, McCauley’s Black American and Afro–Puerto Rican characters remind us that these voices have always been here, occupying the very center of American life—even if we haven’t always been willing to listen.

As a reader and writer of short fiction, I found countless nuggets of wisdom within the pages of When Trying to Return Home, from crafting memorable characters to building historical settings that feel alive to sustaining a narrative across stories. I found myself tearing through the collection in a matter of days while wondering how McCauley had pulled everything off. I couldn’t answer that question on my own, so I reached out to McCauley to get her take.

Jennifer Maritza McCauley is a writer, poet, and university professor. She has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, CantoMundo, Kimbilio, and the Sundress Academy for the Arts. She holds an MFA from Florida International University and a PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Missouri. The author of the cross-genre collection Scar On/Scar Off, she is an assistant professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Houston–Clear Lake.

We spoke at the beginning of the New Year about multi-genre writing, researching outside of hegemonic archives, and the impact of teaching on her writing. This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.

*

Vanessa Genao: When did you know you wanted to put together a collection of stories? What came first, the themes or the stories themselves?

Jennifer Maritza McCauley: It’s wild to say this because it’s 2023, but the first story was written in 2009 in my undergraduate class at the University of Pittsburgh with Geeta Kothari. The story was “Last Saints,” which appears in the collection in a strongly edited form. I didn’t think I had a collection until about six years later when I was in my PhD program and had accumulated a few stories from my MFA and from writing on my own. I had about four published stories—“Last Saints,” “The Missing One” (then called “Bagmen”), “Torsion,” and “Fevers”—and I thought perhaps it was time to start thinking about a collection. The themes came later. I originally titled the collection Where I’m Bound, because all of the characters were inextricably bound to some place or somebody, but then I wrote a poem for my collection Scar On/Scar Off called “When Trying to Return Home,” and I decided to turn that into a piece of fiction. After I reread the new work, I thought it fit into my short story collection. I realized all of my characters were looking for home in idealized people or places, so I changed the title. I later wrote “Good Guys” and “Liberation Day” and chose to interlink some of the characters and locations. But ultimately the stories came first, then the themes.

VG: You do a fantastic job of creating distinct voices for each narrator. What is your approach to crafting voice?

JMM: I used to be an acting minor in my undergrad, and my professors taught us about method acting. Writing voice is a bit like method acting to me; I fully embody my characters. When I write, the character inhabits me—I’m not myself anymore. My pen is moving, I’m typing on the keyboard, but a brand-new person, emerging fresh and wanting, appears on the page. It’s almost an out-of-body experience. For example, “Good Guys” is a story I wrote in one take late one night. I knew Alejandro—I felt I knew him intimately and had met people like him before—so I sat down and wrote his story as he wanted me to tell it. In “Last Saints” I became characters in 1930s Louisiana. They felt real to me, so I told their stories in their voices. I don’t know how to describe it, but finding voice is like becoming somebody outside of yourself.

VG: With the locations and time periods depicted in this collection, you must have done a lot of research. What did that process look like, especially when writing about the often undocumented and unarchived experiences of Black Americans and Afro-Latinos? When did you turn to archival materials, and when did you consult other sources, such as family or friends?

JMM: I wrote a novel for my MFA thesis about Southern Louisiana during the Reconstruction Era. I wrote “Last Saints” way before I did the research for that book. I did go back to “Last Saints” after spending a few months in Louisiana off and on and corrected things in my short story, adding more historical colors to the piece and details from the time I had spent there. I was lucky enough to do some research at The Historic New Orleans Collection and was able to read records from folks who lived in the area during the 1930s, and that further informed my work. I also studied at the University of Puerto Rico and worked on “La Espera” while I was there. I have family that lives on the island, in Guayanilla, who have always been around to give me their opinions, advice, and understanding as well. So all of that went into the construction of these stories. In this collection, every story is set in a place I’ve lived or have spent extensive time in.

VG: The collection is titled When Trying to Return Home and consistently explores the question of belonging. How has your understanding of home evolved through working on this collection?

JMM: That’s an amazing question. I originally thought home was a fixed place. I’ve lived in several places at this point, all of which I’ve at one point called my home. I was always confused about what “home” really constituted. But now I’ve come to see home as embodied in people and how you feel about where you are. I live in Houston now, but I’m with my husband, who feels like home to me. My friends here make me feel like I’m home. I also feel like I’m home in Pittsburgh, where I grew up and where my mother lives, and in Puerto Rico, where some of my family resides. So for me home is an internal condition, how you feel about where you are.

I’ve come to see home as embodied in people and how you feel about where you are.

VG: Many stories explore complex dynamics between mothers, daughters, and sisters. What power do you find in writing about women in community?

JMM: Writing about women in community emboldening and empowering each other keeps me going. There’s a sacred bond in female relationships, and that’s something I wanted to depict in this book. We have a shared understanding, a kinship that is so wonderful it’s near inexplicable. That’s what I wanted to show in my book, that these types of relationships are possible and exist.

VG: As a Dominican American woman myself, I found so much joy and self-recognition in the lives of these characters. What does it mean to you to write about (Afro-)Latinidad and Blackness?

JMM: That’s beautiful. I’m so happy you told me you found self-recognition in my characters—that really made my day. I didn’t grow up reading about people like me in school; I had to seek these stories out on my own. I remember telling my child self if I ever write a book, it will be about people like me, so that maybe Black American, Afro-Latina, and Latina readers will be able to see themselves in my work. So it does mean a lot to me to have a book published about Black Americans and Afro-Latinas and to have Counterpoint recognize my work.

VG: What is it about the short story format that intrigues or challenges you? How do you know when an idea is meant to be short fiction?

JMM: I’m a multi-genre writer, so I write poetry and prose interchangeably. I do gravitate toward short forms because I like getting in and out, saying what I need to say and then moving on. I like going straight for maximum impact in the shortest amount of space possible. My next project is a novel; I also like long forms. I guess I just like writing everything! The piece tells me what it needs to be, whether that be a poem, a short story, or a novel.

VG: How has teaching literature and creative writing influenced your own writing and publishing journey?

JMM: Teaching has immeasurably influenced my writing. When I teach I think: How can I translate this amazing work I love in a way that students who have never read it will appreciate it? What are the salient points of this text? What is the context? What do they need to know, and what do I need to challenge my students to think about? I find that I ask myself these same questions after I’ve finished a piece. How can I explain what I just wrote to somebody who has never read it? Why should they read it? Teaching has definitely helped me. I also think it’s valuable to learn from literary greats. I often think of the writers I teach as the real professors. When we’re reading Zora Neale Hurston, Zora herself is teaching us how to write literature.

VG: Who do you hope When Trying to Return Home reaches?

JMM: I hope it reaches everyone who cares to read it. I don’t have a designated audience for the book. If there is anyone who has left their home and misses it, anyone who wishes they belonged, anyone who feels estranged, anyone who is looking for someone to understand them, anyone who is flawed and knows it, anyone who is trying to start again after a perceived failure, then this book was written for you.